What Next for Trauma-Informed Education Research? A Research Prioritisation Exercise with Young People as Informants

Children and young people (henceforth referred to as children) who experience severe childhood adversity are at risk of mental health and developmental challenges that mean standard approaches to education are not able to support their needs, resulting in high levels of exclusion and alternate provision. Evidence of the best education models to support positive outcomes is needed. This exercise aimed to identify research priorities of children impacted by severe adversity and the people who surround/support them to be used to inform future work surrounding the education of children with a history of trauma. Research prioritisation methods were used. The views of adult stakeholders with lived or professional experience, and children with histories of trauma who attend a specialist school were collected. Two surveys were circulated in each group collecting: 1. Respondents' questions (priorities) about education for children with trauma; 2. Rankings of these priorities. The first children's survey was carried out within a school. The resulting 25 questions were presented to eight students who each chose three questions which they deemed most important. In the adult survey, 114 respondents suggested 196 questions. The children's questions were combined with the adult questions which resulted in 221 questions in total. These were categorised into six themes (Child Centred, Home, Interventions and Alternate Provisions, Policy & Wider, School, and Teachers & Learning). Questions were re-circulated under these categories, and 48 individuals ranked their top 5 or 10 questions (dependent on the number of questions in the category), and the top five questions overall were labelled as priorities. The top priorities generally reflected well-researched areas in the field of trauma, namely how trauma-informed learning and care can be implemented in mainstream schools. This suggests a lack of evidence communication. Future research should aim to improve knowledge dissemination.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40653-025-00711-3.